Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader eBook

Turn not your back to others, especially in speaking;
jog not the table or desk on which another reads or
writes; lean not on any one.

Be no flatterer; neither play with any one that delights
not to be played with.

Read no letters, books, or papers, in company; but
when there is a necessity for doing it, you must ask
leave. Come not near the books or writings of
any one so as to read them, unless desired.

When another speaks, be attentive yourself, and disturb
not the audience. If any one hesitates in his
words, help him not, nor prompt him, without being
desired; interrupt him not, nor answer him till his
speech is ended.

Be not curious to know the affairs of others, neither
approach to those that speak in private.

Make no show of taking great delight in your victuals;
feed not with greediness; lean not on the table; neither
find fault with what you eat.

Let your discourses with men of business be short.

Be not immoderate in urging your friend to discover
a secret.

Speak not in an unknown tongue in company, but in
your own language, and as those of quality do, and
not as the vulgar.

LESSON XLVII

USING THE EYES

The difference between men consists, in great measure,
in the intelligence of their observation. The
Russian proverb says of the non-observant man, “He
goes through the forest and sees no firewood.”

“Sir,” said Johnson, on one occasion,
to a fine gentleman, just returned from Italy, “some
men will learn more in the Hampstead stage than others
in the tour of Europe.” It is the mind
that sees as well as the eye.

Many, before Galileo, had seen a suspended weight
swing before their eyes with a measured beat; but
he was the first to detect the value of the fact.
One of the vergers in the cathedral at Pisa, after
filling with oil a lamp which swung from the roof,
left it swinging to and fro. Galileo, then a
youth of only eighteen, noting it attentively, conceived
the idea of applying it to the measurement of time.

Fifty years of study and labor, however, elapsed before
he completed the invention of his pendulum,—­an
invention the importance of which, in the measurement
of time and in astronomical calculations, can scarcely
be overvalued.

While Captain Brown was occupied in studying the construction
of bridges, he was walking in his garden one dewy
morning, when he saw a tiny spider’s-net suspended
across his path. The idea occurred to him, that
a bridge of iron ropes might be constructed in like
manner, and the result was the invention of his Suspension
Bridge.

So trifling a matter as a straw may indicate which
way the wind blows. It is the close observation
of little things which is the secret of success in
business, in art, in science and in every other pursuit
in life.